An interesting article on finding geo data (OpenStreetMap) using common-use search software as SOLR a java frontend to Lucene. Apache Lucene is a Java™-based, high performance search library. Apache Solr is a search server that uses Lucene to provide search, faceting, and many more capabilities over HTTP. Both are licensed under the commercial-friendly Apache Software License. Both Lucene and Solr also offer the ability to restrict the space being searched by applying one or more filters, which are key to spatial search. Range queries and range filters are among the essential mechanisms for restricting the space.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/j-spatial/index.html